Media outlets and journalists sharply criticized the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for interfering in the presidential election after Director James Comey violated precedent and policy by sending a letter to Congress saying the agency is reviewing newly discovered emails surrounding Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server as secretary of state. That announcement was followed by a series of additional leaks from the FBI.

Writing at The Daily Beast, Wayne Barrett takes note of the pipeline between conservative FBI agents (both active and retired) and Fox News. Figures like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor and current Donald Trump surrogate, as well as James Kallstrom, the former head of the New York City FBI office, have appeared on the network and used its air to amplify the grievances of these agents.

Barrett reports that Kallstrom has “been on an anti-Comey romp for months, most often on Fox, where he’s called the Clintons as a ‘crime family.’” Appearing on The Kelly File, Kallstrom claimed that agents involved in the Clinton investigation were “P.O.’d” that President Obama said the Clinton emails weren’t a national security issue and compared the statement to “someone driving another nail in the coffin of the criminal justice system.”

After FBI Director James Comey cleared Clinton of wrongdoing in the email investigation, Kallstrom made more appearances on Fox News and alleged that agents “both on the job and off the job” were “worried about the reputation of the agency they love.” Kallstrom again used Fox as a platform for his views, endorsing Trump on Stuart Varney’s Fox Business show, describing Clinton as a “pathological liar.”

Kallstrom responded to Comey’s letter to congressional leaders telling them that the agency would be reviewing newly discovered emails with yet another Fox appearance.

Kallstrom’s victory tour this weekend also included an appearance on Fox with former Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, another close associate of Pataki’s, who complained on air that she’d been the victim in 2006 when word emerged that the U.S attorney and FBI were probing her in the midst of a race she eventually lost to Andrew Cuomo to become New York Attorney General.

Her concern about the political impact of law enforcement leaks, though, didn’t extend to Democrat Hillary Clinton. “He couldn’t hold on to this any longer,” Kallstrom said of Comey. “Who knows, maybe the locals would’ve done it,” he added, a reference to leaks that elicited glee from Pirro, who echoed: “New York City, that’s my thing!”

[…]

He declined to explain why Megyn Kelly stated as a fact that he was in contact with agents “involved” in the case. Asked in a follow up email if he suggested or encouraged any particular actions in his exchanges with active agents, Kallstrom replied: “No.”

“Now, I’m supporting Comey,” Kallstrom told me on the phone, adding that he can’t do or say anything else before election day. “He can’t characterize” what the bureau has from the Weiner emails. “The FBI can’t say anything without having all the information,” Kallstrom contends, just after telling me he supports the FBI director who’s under fire for having done just that.

[..]

It’s clear enough, though, why when Comey sent a note to FBI staff on Friday explaining his decision to inform Congress about the renewed Clinton probe, the scoop about that internal memo went to Fox News. Why Kallstrom gets booked to talked about the Clintons a “crime family.” Why Clinton Cash author Peter Schweitzer, caught in a web of Breitbart and Trump conflicts, would announce on Fox that he was asked in August to sit down with New York office FBI agents investigating the Clinton Foundation (with The New York Times reporting this week that the agents were relying largely on his discredited work when they pitched a fullscale probe).

Fox is the pipeline for the fifth column inside the bureau, a battalion that says it’s doing God’s work, chasing justice against those who are obstructing it, while, in fact, it’s doing GOP work, even on the eve of a presidential election.

Fox News is falsely claiming that a Justice Department official shared “inside information” with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to delegitimize the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private server that found no grounds for prosecution. In fact, the information in question was publicly available.

Fox News chief national correspondent Ed Henry claimed that there is “a possible conflict of interest in the FBI probe” into Clinton’s server Assistant U.S. Attorney General Peter Kadzik emailed Clinton campaign manager John Podesta in May 2015 -- in a stolen email WikiLeaks recently released -- to share “inside information” that the head of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice would testify before a House Judiciary Committee meeting, potentially about Clinton’s emails. Henry claimed that Kadzik was “trying to hide” his “heads up” from “public record” by sending it from Kadzik’s private email address to Podesta’s private address. From the November 2 edition of Happening Now:

ED HENRY: You were just playing Donald Trump talking about Peter Kadzik. He's somebody who's the assistant attorney general -- big job at the Justice Department, overseeing congressional relations. He was part of informing Congress about the fact that this FBI probe was essentially back on, questions because of that dinner he had with John Podesta, the previous relationship representing him, and now WikiLeaks has a new email. This one as well from 2015, in which we see Kadzik giving what he called a “heads up” to John Podesta.

[...]

So, look, this was someone who had inside information about what was going on. He's giving the Clinton campaign a heads up about the State Department emails. And guess what? He did not send it on his Justice Department email. That would have been a public record. He sent it from his Gmail to John Podesta's Gmail; the only way we know is because of WikiLeaks. But they were trying to hide this, Heather.

But Henry’s suggestion of wrongdoing fails to note that information about the House hearing in question -- and all witnesses scheduled to testify, including the subject of Kadzik’s “heads up,” Benjamin Mizer of the Civil Division -- was publicly posted on House.gov, as the details about all public House hearings are. Bloomberg Politics’ Ben Brody noted that “Kadzik was alerting Podesta to public events” because “the Judiciary Committee held an open hearing that day, and a new filing in the court case” was made “a day earlier.”

This is not the first time that Fox News has sought to create a scandal based on communications from Kadzik; Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy pushed the false conservative claim that Kadzik was “overseeing” the FBI’s email review when in fact, his responsibility is communicating with Congress about the investigation when appropriate.

The network morning shows spent nearly half an hour covering the four-day-old story that the FBI found emails that may be pertinent to an investigation of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server, but less than two minutes on a new report detailing possibly illegal actions Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump took in the 1990s to avoid reporting hundreds of millions of dollars of taxable income.

Just yesterday, The New York Timesexplained that “thanks to a” possibly illegal tax maneuver Trump used in the early 1990s, he “potentially escaped paying tens of millions of dollars in federal personal income taxes” (emphasis added):

[N]ewly obtained documents show that in the early 1990s, as he scrambled to stave off financial ruin, Mr. Trump avoided reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income by using a tax avoidance maneuver so legally dubious his own lawyers advised him that the Internal Revenue Service would most likely declare it improper if he were audited.

Thanks to this one maneuver, which was later outlawed by Congress, Mr. Trump potentially escaped paying tens of millions of dollars in federal personal income taxes. It is impossible to know for sure because Mr. Trump has declined to release his tax returns, or even a summary of his returns, breaking a practice followed by every Republican and Democratic presidential candidate for more than four decades.

Tax experts who reviewed the newly obtained documents for The New York Times said Mr. Trump’s tax avoidance maneuver, conjured from ambiguous provisions of highly technical tax court rulings, clearly pushed the edge of the envelope of what tax laws permitted at the time. “Whatever loophole existed was not ‘exploited’ here, but stretched beyond any recognition,” said Steven M. Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center who helped draft tax legislation in the early 1990s.

Yet Good Morning America was the only broadcast morning show to cover this detailed reporting on the Republican presidential nominee possibly committing a crime, devoting two interviewsegmentsto the issue for a scant airtime of 1 minute and 47 seconds. The other two morning shows did not mention the Times report or Trump’s tax avoidance at all.

The networks’ Sunday shows have demonstrated a pattern of ignoring investigative reporting about Trump in favor of hyping any recent news about Clinton. Now the networks’ weekday morning shows seem to be following the same pattern.

Methodology: Media Matters searched SnapStream transcripts for ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Today, and CBS’ CBS This Morning, with the keywords “Clinton,” “FBI,” “email,” and “Comey” for any comments about the Clinton email story, and the keywords “tax” and “taxes” for any comments about the Trump tax story. Any comments on either subject were then measured for time. At least one discussion covered both topics simultaneously.

NBC’s Chuck Todd and his guests on Meet the Press suggested that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign could end the media freakout over the FBI’s announcement that it has discovered emails on a device belonging to Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s estranged husband that may or may not be significant in the bureau’s probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server by simply releasing Abedin’s emails themselves. This inane request ignores the fact that the computer is in the FBI’s custody, and not Abedin’s.

FBI Director James Comey released a letter to congressional leaders on October 28 stating, “In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” and “I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” Comey noted that he was not sure how long the review will take and the FBI “cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant.”

As The Washington Postexplained on October 29, the emails were found on a device that belonged to Abedin’s estranged husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner, who is the target of an investigation unrelated to Clinton’s emails. According to the Post, law enforcement officials “said it was possible the messages could be duplicates to others already recovered.”

On the October 30 edition of Meet the Press, Todd, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, and Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence all asked why the Clinton campaign couldn’t simply release the emails themselves, despite reporting that explained that the FBI seized the device in question.

During an interview with Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, Todd stated: “There’s an easy way for you guys to clear some of this up. Huma Abedin is a vice chair of the campaign. Does she have access to her emails now? ... Can you guys release all of Huma’s emails yourselves? Why wait for Comey to do it?”

Later in a panel discussion, Kudlow asked, “Why doesn’t Huma have a press conference, and say here are the emails?” While Todd expressed amusement at the idea of a campaign staffer holding a press conference, he didn’t question the idea of Huma releasing emails that are currently in FBI custody.

And during an interview earlier in the program, Pence asked, with no pushback from Todd, why doesn’t Clinton “ask her senior aide to release all these emails?”

Over the past two days, The New York Times has devoted five of its six above-the-fold articles to FBI director James Comey’s letter to congressional leaders indicating that the Bureau is reviewing additional “emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server as secretary of state. By providing such prominent coverage, the Times has indicated that the letter is news of the highest possible significance -- in spite of the Times’ own reporting that FBI agents have yet to read the emails and determine if they are significant and the letter “did not reopen” the investigation.

In his October 28 letter, Comey wrote that the FBI has “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” while investigating an unrelated case and is taking “appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” He added that the “FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete.”

Despite the paucity of information Comey indicated was available, the letter triggered a firestorm of speculative media coverage.

On Saturday, the entirety of the Times’ front page above the fold was dedicated to three separate articles about Comey’s letter. The lead story declared, “New Emails Jolt Clinton Campaign In Race’s Last Days; FBI Looks at Messages Found During Inquiry.” But as that article noted, it is not clear whether the emails are “new” or duplicates of emails previously reviewed by the FBI; the FBI “had not yet examined” the emails.

The Times front page drewcriticism for providing such prominent coverage before it was clear whether the emails in question were even relevant to the investigation.

Two of the three above-the-fold articles on the front page of the Sunday New York Times also dealt with the FBI letter, one of which stated that Comey’s letter “did not reopen” the inquiry into Clinton’s private server.

The Times has been frequently criticized during this election season for overplaying stories that suggest scandal on the part of Hillary Clinton, including publishing 16 articles on its front page that referenced the Clinton Foundation between July 2015 and September 2016 and botching key reports on Clinton’s email server.

Several right-wing media outlets have breathlessly scandalized a stolen email released by WikiLeaks showing President Obama received emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she was secretary of state. These outlets claim the email proves Obama lied when he claimed to have learned about her private email server from news reports about it, even though the White House clarified over a year ago that while the president knew her email address, he did not know about the server.

The two January 2015 emails in question show a discussion between aides Robby Mook and Huma Abedin about whether Clinton would participate in an upcoming Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) summit in Morocco. Abedin expressed concern about Clinton cancelling her appearance, saying that Moroccan king Mohammed VI pledged $12 million to the Clinton Foundation’s charitable efforts and was expecting Clinton’s participation.

On October 21, Trump said during a rally in North Carolina, “Now from WikiLeaks, we just learned she tried to get 12 million (dollars) from the king of Morocco for an appearance. More pay for play." On October 23, Tapper and Wallace questioned Mook, who is now Clinton's campaign manager, about the emails released by WikiLeaks. On State of the Union, Tapper, although noting that Clinton didn’t go to Morocco, insisted that “this is a real issue ... pay to play.” And on Fox News Sunday, Wallace asked, “why wasn’t that classic pay to play?”

The suggestion that Clinton’s activities with regard to Morocco are a corrupt pay to play are dubious for three reasons.

First, there is no evidence that Clinton offered Morocco’s leadership any government action. In fact, she was in no position to do so, as the summit was scheduled for more than two years after she stepped down as secretary of state.

Second, in spite of Abedin’s concerns, Clinton did not actually attend the summit and it went forward anyway.

Third, according to ABC News, “Clinton Foundation records do not show any direct pledge of funding from the king or government of Morocco to the charity.” ABC suggests that this is because the $12 million pledge was actually a commitment to CGI, which are “agreements only to aid the program's international projects, not to directly fund the Clinton Foundation itself.”

The accusation is just the latest Trump has leveled against Clinton as he's argued she engaged in "pay for play" schemes involving the Clinton Foundation during her time as secretary of state. But the Clinton Global Initiative summit in Morocco that Clinton was set to attend in exchange for the $12 million pledge took place in May 2015 and was discussed in emails by Clinton's top aides in November 2014, after her tenure as secretary of state ended.

Clinton did not end up attending the summit.

Because Clinton did not attend the summit, was not in the employ of the government at the time, and the funds would not have gone to the Clinton Foundation directly, there is no “pay for play” here, despite claims by Trump and some in the media. Instead, this is just the latest in a string of reportingfailures regarding Clinton Foundation donations.

Newspaper editorial boards are sharply criticizing Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for promising that he and his fellow Republican senators would block any and all nominees for the Supreme Court put forth by a President Hillary Clinton, noting that McCain’s promise upends the GOP’s stated reasons for refusing to even hold a vote on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.

After an NBC News reporter drew attention to stolen emails belonging to Clinton campaign press secretary Brian Fallon, which were released by WikiLeaks, Trump’s campaign charged that one of the emails “reveals ‘collusion’ between Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Justice Department that tainted the criminal investigation into Clinton’s private email set-up.” The email in question, dated May 19, 2015, states: "DOJ folks inform me there is a status hearing in this case this morning, so we could have a window into the judge's thinking about this proposed production schedule as quickly as today." As Politicoexplained about an hour before the Fox segments, Fallon’s message “predates that probe.”

Despite the impossibility of the Trump campaign’s claim, Fox’s Herridge repeated the claim. Appearing on Your World, Herridge said, “[T]here's another hacked email that shows former Justice Department staffer Brian Fallon, who is now a senior member of the Clinton campaign team, was working with his former Justice Department colleagues about an upcoming hearing in the email investigation.” She continued, “Trump's campaign called it collusion and wants all the communications to be released from the Clinton campaign. That's obviously not realistic, but for a point of context, at the height of the email investigation, any kind of communication between the Clinton campaign operatives and the Justice Department was clearly inappropriate by either side.”

But just six minutes after Herridge’s irresponsible and erroneous assertions about that email, Fox’s Napolitano explained that both she and Trump were wrong:

ANDREW NAPOLITANO: You know, the email that we're talking about has to do with the Freedom of Information Act cases, and not with the criminal investigation. If Donald Trump's allegation were true, and the Justice Department had been tipping off the Clinton campaign about the criminal investigation of Mrs. Clinton, that tip itself would be a crime, but that's not what the emails that Catherine Herridge was referencing reveal. In fact, those emails were about the Freedom of Information Act cases, which are civil cases, which anyone can get access to. So I don't see the impropriety here that Trump is concerned about.

Herridge made sure to note the date of Fallon’s email, but she neglected to inform Fox’s audience that the email was sent two months before the FBI’s investigation began -- making her concern about improper communications in support of the Trump campaign’s claim completely baseless. Herridge has a long history of getting details of the investigation into Clinton’s use of email wrong, thanks to her tendency to rely on anonymous sources that end up burning her.

At an October 10 campaign rally, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump claimed Clinton family friend and adviser Sidney Blumenthal told Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, that “one important point has been universally acknowledged by nine previous reports about Benghazi: The attack was almost certainly preventable.” Trump alleged Blumenthal said that “if the GOP wants to raise that as a talking point against her, it is legitimate”:

In an October 10 article, Eichenwald revealed that Sputnik, a news organization “established by the [Russian] government controlled news agency, Rossiya Segodnya,” discovered in a WikiLeaks dump of Podesta’s hacked emails “a purportedly incriminating email from Blumenthal” calling the Benghazi attacks a “legitimate” talking point against Clinton.

In reality, Sputnik’s declared “‘October surprise’” quoted “two sentences from a 10,000 word piece” Eichenwald wrote for Newsweek “which apparently Blumenthal had emailed to Podesta.” Contrary to the lies from Sputnik and Trump, Eichenwald’s article is not about how the Benghazi attacks are Hillary Clinton’s fault, but rather “the obscene politicization of the assault that killed four Americans” and “the Republican Benghazi committee which was engaged in a political show trial disguised as a Congressional investigation.”

Even though “once they realized their error, Sputnik took the article down,” Trump continued to use Russian state media’s lie as a weapon against his political opponent. This fits Trump and his campaign’s patternofquestionablerelationswithRussia, including calls for the Kremlin to commit a cyberattack against Hillary Clinton.

As Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump hints that he will highlight the Clintons' marriage during the second presidential debate, reporters should remember that Trump’s media sycophants and surrogates praised his "courage" and "restraint" for not stooping to that level during the first debate.

On December 7, President-elect Donald Trump named Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as his pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Media should take note of Pruitt’s climate science denial, his deep ties to the energy industries he will be charged with regulating, and his long record of opposition to EPA efforts to reduce air and water pollution and combat climate change.

President-elect Donald Trump has picked -- or considered -- nearly a dozen people who have worked in right-wing media, including talk radio, right-wing news sites, Fox News, and conservative newspapers, to fill his administration. And Trump himself made weekly guest appearances on Fox for a number of years while his vice president used to host a conservative talk radio show.